Workers are strategically taking direct action to disrupt fake corporate holidays like “Black Friday” and Starbucks’ “Red Cup Day.” Last week, on the Friday after Thanksgiving, hundreds of Macy’s workers in Washington state walked out in protest of the company’s refusal to bargain a fair contract with the union (UFCW 3000). One week prior to that, on Nov. 16, Starbucks workers at over 200 locations around the US walked off the job on “Red Cup Day” to protest the company’s relentless union busting and refusal to bargain a contract with any of the stores that have unionized with Starbucks Workers United. In this worker solidarity livestream from Nov. 29, TRNN Editor-in-Chief Maximillian Alvarez speaks directly with workers and organizers on the frontlines of these struggles, including: Moe Mills, a worker-organizer at Starbucks and member of Starbucks Workers United; Liisa Luick, a longtime sales associate at Macy’s; and Sean Embly from the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local 3000.
GoFundMe: Help suspended union workers make ends meet.
Studio Production: Adam Coley, David Hebden, Cameron Granadino
Transcript
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Welcome everyone to The Real News Network. My name is Maximillian Alvarez. I’m the editor in chief here at The Real News, and it’s so great to have you all with us. After taking a much needed break over Thanksgiving, we are back with another installment of our biweekly worker solidarity live streams here at The Real News. We’ve got a doozy for y’all today. But before we get rolling, I want to just take a quick second to make a candid plea to all of you watching and listening right now. The Real News is an independent viewer supported grassroots media network. We don’t take corporate cash, we don’t have ads. And as you may have noticed, we don’t put any of our reporting behind paywalls. We have a small but fiercely dedicated team of folks who are committed to reporting and lifting up the voices from the front lines of struggle around the world, people fighting for their rights and fighting against exploitation in the workplace. People standing up to defend their civil and human rights against the police and prison industrial complexes and other apparatuses of state repression and surveillance.
People fighting the life shredding madness of imperial domination, colonial occupation, and endless war around the globe. People standing up against racism, sexism, anti-LGBTQ+ hatred, and all forms of bigotry in the US and around the world. People fighting against misinformation and fighting to maintain a free press, people fighting to stop the destruction of our shared planet and fighting for a future that’s still worth living in. You’ve seen our work, you know what we’re about, but we absolutely cannot continue to do this work without your support. And like everyone else right now, we are in a mad dash to raise money here at the end of the year so we can keep bringing y’all coverage of the stories, voices, and struggles you care about most in 2024 and beyond. So please become a supporter of The Real News. Use the donate button on this live stream or head on over to TheRealNews.com/donate and become a supporter today. I promise you it really, really makes a difference.
All right, from Amazon to Macy’s to Starbucks, workers around the US and beyond have been strategically taking direct actions to disrupt fake corporate holidays like so-called Black Friday and Starbucks’s Red Cup Day. Last week, on the Friday after Thanksgiving, around 400 Macy’s workers in Washington State walked out in protests of the company’s refusal to bargain a fair contract with the union that is UFCW Local 3000. As the great Michael Sainato, a longtime real news contributor reported recently at The Guardian, “In 2021 and 2022, Macy’s reported profits of over $1 billion. The company spent $600 million on stock buybacks and paid out $173 million in dividends to shareholders in 2022 alone. The union has criticized these profits and Macy’s Chief Executive Jeff Gennette’s $11 million annual pay package as the company refuses to bargain on wage increases the union is asking for in a new contract.” “We would like them to share some of those profits so we can have a livable wage”, said Azi Domingo, who has worked at Macy’s in Washington for 21 years.
“Macy’s CEO gets $11 million per year while a lot of his workers rely on food banks and some can’t even afford to see doctors because of the low wages and the expensive healthcare.” Sainato continues, “Starting pay in the most recent contract with Macy’s was at or near Washington State’s minimum wage, which goes up to $16.28 an hour on the 1st of January.” “They have worked us to death on skeletal staffing and it’s just not fair,” said Lisa Luick, a longtime sales associate at Macy’s in Linwood, Washington. Lisa continues, “When we see that they’ve made all these billions when they pledge to put money back into the business, they’re establishing 30 new stores. They have the Macy’s Day parade, they have the fireworks. We are angry and even our customers comment on it.” One week prior to that, on November 16th, Starbucks workers at over 200 locations around the US walked off the job on “Red Cup Day” to protest the company’s relentless union busting and its refusal to bargain a contract with any of the stores that have unionized with Starbucks workers United over the past two years.
As Alyssa Hardy reported at Teen Vogue on the day of the strike, “On November 16th, nearly 9,000 Starbucks employees walked out of over 200 stores around the United States in what they are calling the Red Cup Rebellion.” Each year, Starbucks releases a free reusable red cup ahead of the holiday season. And according to Reuters, the release day is one of the coffee brands’ biggest traffic days, but the strike comes after 363 Starbucks stores in 41 states have voted to unionize over the last two years. Starbucks has yet to come to the bargaining table with the unionized shops unless it is in person, which is a central issue in bargaining, some of which were closed in the time since. That is, some of the stores that unionized, as we’ve reported here at The Real News, we’re closed by Starbucks. They claim it’s not in retaliation for organizing, but we’ll get to that later. Alyssa Hardy continues, “Last week, workers filed an unfair labor practice charge with the National Labor Relations Board over Starbucks’s refusal to bargain around promotional days.”
Now, as we always do here at The Real News, we’re going to take y’all to the front lines of struggle so you can hear firsthand from the folks who are fighting these fights about what they’re fighting for, why it’s important, and what you can do to help. I’m truly honored to be joined on the live stream today by our three incredible guests. We are joined today by Moe Mills, a worker organizer at Starbucks, and a member of Starbucks Workers United. We are also joined by Lisa Luick, a longtime sales associate at Macy’s in Washington State. And we are also joined by Sean Embly from the United Food and Commercial Workers, or UFCW Local 3000, which represents over 50,000 members working in grocery, retail, healthcare, meat packing, cannabis, and other industries across Washington state, northeast Oregon and northern Idaho. Moe, Lisa, Sean, thank you so much for joining us today on The Real News Network. I really appreciate it. Okay, well, let’s get rolling gang, because we got a lot to dig into here.
These are really important struggles that y’all have been involved in, and I want to make sure that our viewers and listeners hear directly from you about what happened on the days of the actions, what has brought us to this point, and where we go from here. As I said in the intro, what folks in the labor movement and beyond can do to support y’all in these struggles. So to start things off, let’s go around the table and have our amazing panelists introduce yourselves to the great Real News viewers and listeners. Now, obviously we’re not going to be able to cover everything in this first round, but I wanted to ask if y’all could each take about five minutes to just give us a breakdown, introduce yourself, tell us a little bit about who you are, your involvement in these struggles, the work that you do, and then tell us about these actions that y’all participated in on Black Friday and on Red Cup Day. So Moe, why don’t we start with you, then we’ll go to Lisa.
Moe Mills:
Yeah, thank you. So my name is Moe Mills. I’m a Starbucks partner in St. Louis, Missouri. I’ve been a partner for a little over four years and a supervisor for two of those years. We’ve got eight union stores in St. Louis, my store has been union for a little over one year. Like Max said before, we’ve got over 360 stores nationally since this campaign started in December 2021, and we’ve seen absolutely no movement on a contract. Eight union stores in St. Louis on November 16th, 200 stores nationally chose to strike over the ULP of Starbucks refusing to bargain regarding staffing for these promotional days. So Starbucks has been under a lot of fire in the press recently for various reasons, and to make up for some of that lost money they’ve been upping the promotional days. Doing huge sales, doing buy one, get one day’s multiple days a week, and not letting partners know until the last minute and not staffing us adequately for these days.
So buy one, get one sounds really, really nice when Starbucks’s drinks are like what, 10, $12 in some areas. But what people don’t see is that behind the line, there are three workers, we’re all struggling. People are not unable to take breaks during this promo in September. Every single Thursday from noon to close drinks were buy one, get one free. I did not take a single lunch. Eventually my store chose to walk out over one of these Thursdays, and then my Thursday shift was completely taken away from me. I lost eight hours a week because they knew if I was there I would walk. But customers also are spending insane amounts of money on these beverages and then waiting in lines for 40, 45 minutes. So it’s hurting the service that customers are getting. It’s hurting the workers, we’re unable to take breaks. We’re working in dirty stores that are under stocked where we’re not getting all of the product that we need so no one leaves happy except for Starbucks, who is just making more and more money during these record-breaking profit seasons.
So on the 16th we struck over that ULP of them refusing to bargain around those promotional days, and that was our largest national strike yet. It was super successful here in St. Louis. Like I said, we’ve got eight union shops and all of them shut down. So it was a really, really big win for us here. I’m really proud of the work that we’ve done and hopefully this opens Starbucks eyes a little bit more. I know it’s starting to open the customer’s eyes, it’s hurting customers almost as much as it’s hurting the workers. And now that we’ve got the customers on our side, I don’t think it’ll be long before Starbucks meets us at the table.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Well, kudos to y’all for holding the line for this long while you have been literally facing a relentless corporate crime wave for two years. We’re going to get to that in the next section, but I just wanted to quickly follow up on that last point and ask them what it was like on the ground that day, what you were hearing from customers. Because I was in Chicago during Red Cup Day, the sacred holiday of Red Cup Day, and I was in a hotel getting ready for a conference. I overheard on Today on NBC one of the hosts say, “Oh, you may have to walk past a picket line to get your Starbucks today.”
I screamed in my hotel bathroom. I was like, “No, you fucking won’t. Do not cross a picket line.” Pardon my French but it just made me so angry and it made me realize that we still have a long way to go in terms of overturning the anti-worker, anti-union sentiment that is broadcast relentlessly from corporate media. But I just wanted to ask if you could say a little more about the action on the day, what you were hearing from folks, what it looked like on the ground, and then we’ll toss it to Lisa.
Moe Mills:
Here in St. Louis, it was overall pretty positive. There’s always a few customers that are frustrated that they can’t get their $12 drink and don’t really understand, but for the most part, we are able. Customers are stopping and asking us what’s going on and asking us, they’re like, “Should I stop going to…” That’s what is hard for me that Starbucks doesn’t see is there is a reason that people make Starbucks a part of their daily routine. There’s people that want to do their homework there, take their meetings there, make that a place they want to be, and it’s the workers. You know what I mean? We are the ones making those drinks that they love. We’re the ones creating the cafe environment that they want to be a part of, that they want to spend their time and bring their friends and family.
So naturally, when a customer pulls into a drive-through or goes to park and go into a cafe and they see their favorite barista that makes their drink for them every single day holding a picket sign that says, “No contract, no coffee,” they’re going to ask questions. So for the most part, I would say it’s been pretty positive. I’ve gotten to connect with a lot of my favorite customers who I know their names, I know their families, when they walk in the store, I’m already making their drink because I know exactly what they want. So we have the relationships with them and it’s been really easy to just explain to them what’s going on, and they’re absolutely appalled. They’re like, “Okay, well I will be back tomorrow and I’m excited to see you and I’m excited to know how the strike…”
Moe Mills:
I’ll be back tomorrow and I’m excited to see you and I’m excited to know how the strike went. So yeah, for the most part, there’s always a handful of people that are just excited to cross a picket line for some reason. But for the most part, our customers are really, really cool and are always down and they drive past the store. They see us with their picket lines, they honk and they go make their coffee at home.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Yeah, yeah. There will always be a certain percentage of boot lickers who think it’s funny to cross a picket line to get your seasonal latte. To those people, go fuck yourself. But Liisa, I wanted to toss things over to you and ask if you could introduce yourself to the livestream. Tell us a little bit about who you are, the work that you do, and how long you’ve been doing that work. And yeah, take us to the action on Black Friday. Give folks the lowdown on what happened that day, what it felt like, and what you were hearing from your fellow workers and people passing on the street.
Liisa Luick:
Yeah. So my name is Liisa Luick and I’ve been working at the Alderwood Macy’s for almost 16 years. I’m currently in the men’s department. I’m a sales associate, and I would like to pleased to say that on the 16th I had the day off and I went out and joined the Starbucks picketers and we had tremendous support in Everett. So it was a lot of fun and a good warmup too Black Friday, which is we had, as you say, we walked off the job for Black Friday weekend. It was a three day ULP strike, unfair labor practice. And the reason for unfair labor practice was because in May I had been suspended for three weeks without pay for calling 911 on a known shoplifter. And this was after calling management and the police, of course, I follow… Excuse me, management and what we call asset protection, loss prevention is probably what you know it as.
And it was a tremendous strike. It was just as Moe says, we had tremendous support and it was really exciting and it was hard. It was cold, but it was very bonding. My coworkers, we had coworkers from three stores, Bellingham, South Center, and Alderwood, and we were out there from 3:00 in the morning until 8:30 at night. The store to shorten its hours, so we didn’t have to go 24 hours, but we had a lot of honking, A lot of people didn’t go in on Monday after the strike was over. One of my longtime customers, he’s a Boeing shop steward, he and his wife came in, he says, “Is it okay to shop now?” I said, absolutely, “Please come in now and thank you for respecting our strike.” He says, “Not only do I respect your strike, but I put your picture up on my wall because this is so inspiring.” So that was kind of high praise really for us, and for me.
But as Moe says, we know our customers. It hurts us not to be there for them on those days, but to have them support us just means the world to us and to understand. And they see the theft and the violence that happens and they are bothered by it. So this is not new to our customers to see why we are striking. And anyway, we kicked off our strike with a presser and a parade down at South Center, which was really fantastic, and I hope there’s footage of that. In contrast to the Macy’s Day parade, we had our own balloons, our Macy’s workers Strike Parade with balloons and speakers and a Cher impersonator and really great attendance. Many, many locals from around the area and from around the country came both to our presser and to support us all weekend as far as way as Denver, Colorado came to the Bellingham strike. So that was, again, really inspiring. It’s amazing how bonding this has been across the board for unions and for workers.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Hell yeah. I think every point or another, I think that should be a staple, just like Scabby the Rat showing up on every picket line. That’s awesome to hear. And I want us to dig in the next round into the contract negotiations, the working conditions, the things that, as you touched on, pushed y’all to this point. But Sean, I wanted to bring you in here and ask if you could kind of talk about the same thing, but from the union side, tell us a bit about yourself, the work that you do and your involvement with the Macy’s workers. I think a lot of folks probably just learned recently that Macy’s workers were unionized, right? So give us a little backstory there and tell us a bit more about yourself and what it was like for you on the day of the action.
Sean Embly:
Sure. A little bit about myself. I’ve been a member of this local since 2009. I started out in warehouse work in a meat department working for local 81 that merged in a local 21, which is now part of local 3,000. I got involved in my union around the paid safe and six day legislation and raising the minimum wage in Washington State, which we eventually were successful at in 2016. And I’ve been on staff for about eight years now. Had a myriad of different roles, worked in healthcare grocery with our packing and processing workers, retail. My involvement from the Macy’s side is really about supporting the retail workers that have been rising up and saying, “Enough is enough. We’re not going to take these working conditions anymore. We’re not going to take these low ball offers from the employer anymore.” We’ve been at the table with Macy’s since last February, last winter negotiating.
And they have just continued to treat the workers poorly, not respect labor law. They are offering incredibly low wages, demanding takeaways in the contract. At one point our local had a lot more Macy’s. We had almost 1,500 workers all up and down the I5 corridor in Western Washington. Now we have three stores. Macy’s has closed down stores over the years to consolidate their footprint. But as Lisa said, this is part of their strategy to expand into smaller areas across the United States. They’re still a very profitable company and they can certainly afford to pay their workers better. And so I think this fight had been brewing for quite some time, a number of contract cycles where Macy’s has continued to come in with disrespectful contract offers not step up and create safer workplaces like workers were demanding, not take the concerns from their workers seriously. And so eventually you have a choice.
You can continue to take the mistreatment from a company or you can stand up and say, no, we’re not going to do this anymore and we’re going to fight to get a better workplace, to get a better contract. And that’s exactly what workers decided to do on Black Friday when they walked off the job and had a huge impact. We made Macy’s restrict their hours on one of the most profitable weekends for them. That alone was a huge impact. We had overwhelming majority of workers out on the strike line, some just deciding to stay home. Customers were not crossing the picket line. And then once that worked, couldn’t get checked out because all the workers were outside on the picket line. So it was a very powering action from my point of view. And talking to workers, they felt good about it. And I think we’re coming out of the three-day unfair labor practice strike in a strong position with more workers willing to step up, feeling more confident about their power.
And you heard Liisa and Moe talk about it a little bit, the relationships that retail workers, service workers have with their customers, that’s what makes the company money. And you have these companies coming in and completely disregarding those relationships with customers. They don’t view workers as a valuable part of their business and think that they can just hire anybody to do the work. When you have years and years in some cases of forming relationships with customers and getting those customers to come back into the store, come back into Starbucks, come back into Macy’s, and they don’t appreciate that. They think that people are disposable and interchangeable and don’t honor the expertise that the workers bring to the table to make their company profitable.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Man, I think that’s really powerfully put. And I mean, it is so depressingly consistent with the stories that we cover here every week on the real news. I mean, we are talking to workers and organizers like yourselves week in, week out. We’ve been talking to Starbucks workers from all over the country since the historic Buffalo victory two years ago, that momentum. Beyond that, we’ve talked to workers at the stores in Ithaca that were closed in suspected retaliation for becoming the first city in the country to have all Starbucks locations unionized. Now all those Starbucks locations are gone. The one in Washington, DC, the one in Seattle, all the workers who have been retaliated against, harassed, fired, descheduled, under scheduled. So they lose their healthcare benefits, just this relentless attack on workers’ rights that Starbucks has been doing in broad daylight. And it is absolutely maddening.
But also what you were saying, Sean, like the other trend that we can hear coming through the stories of workers in industries that appear so different on the surface, but are experiencing so many of the same dynamics that you just described. It was the case with railroad workers last year, more work being piled onto fewer work while the companies cost cut and corner cut year after year, while shareholder dividends, stock buybacks, and executive pay and profits are through the roof. So the workers are pissed off and run into the ground. The customers are pissed off. Communities like East Palestine are being destroyed because of all these cost-cutting Wall Street led measures. But that’s also happening in it’s part of the business model of dollar stores that we’ve talked to workers at dollar stores who are being left with one or two people to manage an entire store, and the shelves are a mess.
People are defecating in the aisles, shoplifting, and a lot of those workers can’t even control the air conditioning in their own stores. And yet the company is raking in huge profits and it is making a conscious decision like Chipotle is, like Starbucks is, like so many other jobs are to understaff people, to pile more work onto fewer workers, to squeeze as much as they can and pocket the difference. This is a economy wide problem that we are hearing in the stories of workers who are going on strike, who are trying to unionize their shops, so on and so forth. But then there’s also the other side of just how incredibly difficult and needlessly difficult it is in this country, “the land of the free for workers” to exercise their right to unionize in the workplace, that is a right. It is not a privilege. It is not a special category.
It is a goddamn right. And yet when workers try to exercise that right, they get fired, they get subjected to harassment, they get management down their throats, they get put in captive audience meetings, their stores get closed, like the bosses can break the law left and right. And the mechanisms of accountability that we have in this country are so minuscule that Starbucks can literally go for years. Like Amazon can go for years, other companies can go for years without bargaining in good faith like they are legally required to do with workers who are exercising their rights. They can just keep not obeying the law. Just like the Pittsburgh Post Gazette owners are. Those workers have been on strike for over a year now, and the owners can just keep not bargaining in good faith and hope that workers lose their homes and leave for another job. This is ridiculous.
So let’s talk about that. Let’s take a step back and give people a bird’s eye view of these two crucial struggles at Macy’s and Starbucks. Let’s remind people about where this all started and what it’s all about. The key issues that workers have been rallying around that have led them to unionize, that have led them to form a union and try to negotiate with the company. What are the issues around wages, working conditions, safety, so on and so forth that y’all are fighting for at Macy’s and Starbucks? And what has been going on in the past year or two years in regards to bargaining with Macy’s and Starbucks, or as we’ve discussed, the lack of bargaining at Macy’s and Starbucks. So Moe, let’s toss it back to you. Give us a sort of bird’s eye view and talk to us about what brought us to this point.
Moe Mills:
Yeah, so at my store, we filed to our Petition to Unionize in May of 2022. And that came after just mostly our experience through the beginning of the pandemic. So just lack of COVID precautions, intense short staffing on floors, keeping the store open even when there would be COVID scares in the store. And this is coming from a background of my store at the time was mostly-
Moe Mills:
… in store at the time was mostly comprised of single parents or people who had multiple children at home, just like a lot of parents providing for a lot of children. And we were scared. I’m not a parent myself, but in my store, we were scared. People were scared to come to work and bring that home to their families. Starbucks was not letting us tell customers to wear masks. We stayed open, our cafes were full of unmasked people, and we were dropping like flies. We were getting burnt out.
We would get sick, go on a temporary COVID leave, come back to a store where half of our coworkers were gone because they had COVID. So that was really scary. And on top of that, I think the pandemic taught Starbucks like, “Okay, we can make just as much money as we made pre-pandemic with half the amount of people on the floor.” I think they liked that it didn’t hurt their bottom line, whether or not it hurt us. And since 2020, we’ve noticed them intensely cutting labor. So it’s not that there aren’t workers, this, quote, unquote, “labor shortage or worker shortage” does not exist. We are here.
Maximillian Alvarez:
The, “No one wants to work any more crap.”
Moe Mills:
No. My store has plenty of partners, we are well staffed, well-equipped to man our floors. We are intentionally getting under scheduled. Starbucks does not want to pay the workers. And it got to the point where this, on top of all of the COVID stuff, it got to the point where I had fellow supervisors of five, six years of tenure who had children at home who rely on the health insurance. And have to work 20 hours a week to maintain their health insurance got cut down to as low as 12 hours a week. And I lost their benefits. And we had to start a food pantry in the back of my store to make sure people were getting fed. And if people are not getting enough hours to access the benefits that Starbucks promotes left and right and also cannot feed themselves or feed their children, that is an utter failure on the company’s part and it’s shameful.
So that’s what drove us to organize. So we filed in May of 2022, won our election in August of 2022. And since then, it has been interesting. We’ve had one bargaining session in which Starbucks blocked out about 15 minutes in. And that has been all the traction I have seen with bargaining. I know their current tactic is to… they have a website that they like to push to employees, both union and non-union as well as customers. That tells everyone that it is Workers United that is not bargaining in good faith. And that Starbucks has taken steps to set up bargaining sessions and get them scheduled. Recently, we checked the website just to see what was going on and our two newest union stores in St. Louis, it said that they both had scheduled and confirmed bargaining dates with Workers United. And we have received absolutely no contact.
Our union staffers don’t know what they’re talking about. The store managers don’t know what they’re talking about, and none of the partners have heard anything. So Starbucks is at the point where they’re just lying and saying that they’re bargaining and saying that they’ve had all of these sessions and no one has seen any movement or heard anything. And in the meantime, they’re still cutting our hours. They’re still pushing out workers. I have two workers in my district in St. Louis that just got put on a paid suspension that aren’t receiving pay all over them, refusing to serve a customer that was verbally assaulting them. So Starbucks is doing anything and everything that it can to push us out and essentially starve us in the meantime while they stalemate on this bargaining.
Maximillian Alvarez:
All right. Well, I’m going to start screaming my head off, but people have already heard enough of that. So let’s cut that out and toss it to Liisa. Liisa, give us the background from your side. As you said, you’ve… Oh, it looks like your phone is turned again, sorry.
Liisa Luick:
I just turned [inaudible 00:34:45].
Maximillian Alvarez:
But if you could, like you said, you’ve been at Macy’s for many years. You’ve seen a lot of changes in Macy’s and the retail industry pre and post COVID. So tell us a little bit about… give us more of the backstory to the kind of working conditions of folks like yourself at Macy’s. What that job entails, what led to this union effort and what the key issues in bargaining are that have pushed y’all to the point of going on strike on Black Friday weekend.
Liisa Luick:
So again, Moe really touched on this about the COVID Pandemic, the COVID era. And our employers learning how to… it was okay to work with fewer people and then, “Oh wow, the profits went up with fewer people.” And so we’ve just been horribly and chronically understaffed. And I had actually gone on two years ago with the New York Times, there’s an article where I have outlined all of this that they published. Because yes, retailers, excuse me, businesses learned real fast, “Hey, we can get away with having fewer people to work and this is great and let’s keep going.” So in our bargain right now or in our store right now, they have been… we’re bargaining.
Macy’s actually is bargaining that they would like to be able to hire more people for the holidays, for more days that aren’t part of the union. And we have said no. We are now looking at working the holidays with just our staff. They’re not hiring anybody. There’s a few holiday hires and that is it. And so we’re going to have to do these long holiday hires, holiday hours on just our staff alone, which the last three days or two days has been daunting. Since COVID in the last few years, which has been different from previous years. We have seen a rise in theft, which has given us a rise in violence and assaults. Yes, things were better in the old days, we did not have this condition, but we do now.
And now we have to deal with it. Even on the strike lines at South Center, we had a couple of situations as recently as that. We have a culture now in our company that’s very heightened of intimidation and retaliation. It’s been very difficult, nobody wants to call anyone, management or anybody about anything because for fear of retaliation. So it’s been a huge problem. And we also have had less… well, again, less staff. So we have customers, as you said, defecating in the aisles. Now, last week was horrible. I couldn’t believe it. Three separate instances where normally we didn’t use to have these problems, or at least hardly ever. It’s just very much a changed time. So we are one of our key components, certainly that’s dear to my heart, that we’re pushing.
And the reason that we struck is for safer conditions, safer for us and safer for the customers. We need increased security. It needs not to be asset protection who… Because that is Macy’s answer is, “Well, we’ll just get asset protection, more asset protection.” Well, they just guard the merchandise. They don’t guard us. And in one instance, probably over a year ago, my colleague and I were again helping some known shoplifters. They had huge knives. We waited on them before. But anyway, this time they came in with huge knives and they were becoming visibly irritated. We became concerned. And actually when they came in with the weapons, I called loss prevention who came. And when the thieves became more agitated, loss prevention came over to me and said, “Hey, we’re leaving. It’s too dangerous for us.” They didn’t bother to call anybody. They just left.
Maximillian Alvarez:
God, this is too dangerous for us. Good luck.
Liisa Luick:
Yeah, that’s exactly what they said and they took off. And Elizabeth and I looked at each other and we’re stunned. We couldn’t believe this. And it’s been the same message ever since. We have as workers confronted management and asset protection about, “Well, hey, what are you going to do about the situation?” This has happened three times. First time was actually over COVID at our morning rallies and the store manager, the asset protection manager, and another manager on different occasions, but at morning rallies every time said the exact same thing, which was, “Well, you risk your life every time you leave your house every day.” So they want to take no responsibility for any of this. And we got that loud and clear.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Wow. So again, I am about ready to explode. My head’s about ready to explode because I’m so angry hearing this. And I just wanted to make that kind of footnote for viewers and listeners. You already heard Moe address one of the other media tropes that we heard a lot over the past couple years. This ghoulish chorus of politicians and Chamber of Commerce boot liquors saying, “No one wants to work anymore.” That was the exact line that they used to cut off the vital pandemic era, social safety net provisions, like the extended child care benefits, the eviction moratoria, the pause on student loan payments, the stimulus checks. All of that was thrown out on the kind of relentless chorus of people claiming without evidence that no one wants to work. People are just sitting at home taking these government benefits and they’re not going to work. So we know for many reasons why that is bullshit, but Moe just gave y’all another one, right? A lot of these stores are well staffed, but they’re deliberately under scheduled.
And so when you walk into a store with a help wanted sign, and you’re seeing two frantic people running around with drinks piling up or clothes piling up or things falling over in the aisles. That’s not because no one wants to work, it’s because the greedy companies don’t want to pay people to properly staff those stores. And you as the customer are being hurt by that. And the workers are sure as hell being hurt by that. So that’s one lie that has been given to this kind of corporate narrative. And another one is what you just said, Liisa, I can’t count how many segments I’ve seen on local and national news about crime waves at CVSs and Walgreens and retail stores like society is bedlam. And we need just more and more police on every street corner, predominantly in working class neighborhoods with a lot of poor Black and brown people. That’s where we need to put all these police. But again, just think about the story that Liisa told you, right?
It’s like if you have stores, including Macy’s, that are understaffed, where the workers are under protected, where they’re overworked, you’re going to put those stores… you’re basically drawing a bullseye on those stores for anyone to shoplift, right? You are making those stores and those workers infinitely more vulnerable to shoplifting because of your greedy corporate practices. That is a side of the story that we never hear when the corporate media is reporting on it. So I just really want to underline that for people because it’s a really important point. And Sean, I wanted to bring you back in here because as someone who’s been with the union for many years and who has also seen, I imagine the kinds of changes that Liisa’s describing from the rank and file position. I’m curious to hear how that connects to what you’ve been seeing in other industries that your members are represented in. Put this in context for us as a union organizer, how does this connect to the broader kind of issues that you’re hearing from other workers within Local 3000 over there?
Sean Embly:
Yeah. Every industry that we represent is dealing with this issue, and it’s become even more acute after and during the pandemic where we’re struggling with short staffing across the board. Especially in industries that are dominated by corporate players. It could be grocery, it could be retail, healthcare. We just had a strike a couple of days prior to the Macy’s ELP strike where workers were striking. It was another unfair labor practice strike. But one of the key demands were these 1300 nurses wanted better staffing so they could take care of their patients because patients are not getting the care they need because the company is staffing them so short. And people want to work, they want more hours, but they also need a safe place to work that is staffed well. Short staffing is a safety issue. You don’t have enough staff to run a store, you don’t have enough staff to run a hospital. That is a safety issue. And who takes the brunt of that safety issue are the workers. And then you have the company like Liisa is articulating and Moe articulated, more concerned about the wellbeing of the assets in the-
Sean Embly:
… about the wellbeing of the assets in the store or the customer than their workers, right? They’re more worried about a customer who has a complaint, who might be mistreating a worker than they are about protecting their workers. They’re more worried about protecting the assets in the store than protecting the workers. So this is a systemic issue that we’re seeing across all industries, because a lot of these companies, in my opinion, are focused on trying to extract as much money from the labor of workers as possible by just continuing to cut labor. It is really an asinine idea.
You know what helps drive sales? Better staffing, better customer service, better patient care, that will help drive sales. How many customers are coming into a Macy’s and not getting help and just walking out the door because nobody’s there to help them out? This is a sign of how disconnected these companies have become and how they don’t know what’s happening in their stores. They’re running it based off of a spreadsheet. They’re not running it based off an experience. And that’s why workers need to have a stronger voice in the way that the companies are ran, not just for the benefit of workers in their everyday life and for their own safety and their own dignity and respect, but also for the benefit of the company. If you have more input from workers, the company is going to benefit as well.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Yeah, I mean, it will never not be ridiculous to me. I mean, I understand why, because their ideology is money, their ideology is more money, and that is the singular focus of these executives and shareholders. And so it all kind of comes down to that in many ways. But it never ceases to amaze me that so many companies, including Starbucks and now Macy’s, it’s like, why don’t you just respect your workers’ rights? Why don’t you just not union bust, respect your workers’ right to organize, respect them at the bargaining table, see them as an asset and a way to improve your business. Why do you got to put everyone through this bullshit for years? It’s just infuriating. Every time I see another, it could be a nonprofit, it could be a media outlet, it could be medieval times in Buena Park, but when workers unionize the companies as a knee-jerk reaction, they just try to smash it and it hurts everybody and it hurts the business. It is a horrible look that leaves an incredible stain on the business for years. So why do it? Why not stop?
Anyway, I could go on for that for years, but we got a few more minutes left, and I wanted with the remaining 10 minutes here to go around the table one more time. We’ve talked quite a bit about the kind of common threads connecting these struggles and also the sort of unique aspects to the work that y’all do and the organizing that you’re involved in. So I want in this final round to kind of bring things back to where we are now and what fellow workers, people in the labor movement and just people watching and listening to this around the country, what can folks do to better support y’all and what can we as a movement do to better support each other? Right?
I mean, I’ve preached this many times to Real News viewers and listeners, right? Our role here, and there are many, right? Don’t cross a goddamn picket line. Don’t forget about these workers. Keep sharing news stories and their posts. Just keep them and their memories and their struggles alive. That’s one small thing that you can do.
Let these companies know how you feel about their union busting about their refusal to recognize their workers’ rights to organize and bargain with the company over their working conditions. Just raise your voice about it. That’s one way that you can help. But also, we got to train ourselves to not have the long-term memory of goldfish, because it was really frustrating to see that over the past two years, every time a new Starbucks store would unionize, everyone was cheering on, rightfully so, but then another store would unionize, and it was like we would start cheering them on and we would forget about the previous store where workers were getting retaliated against or where those stores were getting closed, or where as Moe said people were losing their healthcare, right?
They were being descheduled, right? That’s when bosses turn on the screws, and we’ve forgotten about a lot of those stores. We’ve let those workers down, so we got to also just stay committed for the long haul. I think that that’s something that all of us as just regular people, fellow workers and people who are tuned into a media cycle that makes us forget about these stories as quickly as they appear, we got to train ourselves. We got to do work on ourselves to make sure that that doesn’t happen, that we don’t forget about our fellow workers at Starbucks and beyond, people who are still fighting for a contract. And so that’s where I want to end up here. I want to ask you guys what you would say to folks watching and listening, what you would say to other unions, other regular people about what they can do to help y’all, where things stand now and where we go from here? Moe, let’s start with you again.
Moe Mills:
Yeah. I think you said it well. It’s just don’t forget about us. It has been two years and we have not seen traction on the contract, but that does not mean that our movement has slowed to a stop. New stores are filing every day and new stores are winning every day, and I think in two years to have nearly four hundred stores as a part of our campaign and more organizing is huge, and I’m really, really proud of our campaign.
I would also say, if you are a Starbucks customer, if Starbucks is a part of your routine and we’re a business that you patronize on the regular, just talk to your baristas, connect with them, ask them, figure out what stores in your area are union and choose to go to the union stores and let them know, Hey, I’m here because I heard y’all are union.
You know what I mean? Just connect with them and chat with them. See on a store to store level what they need. If you drive past the Starbucks store and you see they’re out there on strike, pull over join the picket line. I’m sure they’ll all have coffee for you. I’m sure they’ll have a sign you can hold. But yeah, just stay looped in. A really good way to stay looped in is to keep up with our social media. Usually there’s our national socials, our Instagram and Twitter, but on a region to region basis, people have social media. So I just make a point to follow the different regions around me, see what they’re up to, keep tabs on what’s happening in their stores, and that’s a really good way to stay looped in.
When there is a store that maybe won their election six months ago, that’s not getting a lot of attention. That’s a good way to see, oh, they just posted that a worker is being pushed out, or they just posted that a worker got fired for having nail polish on, or not having a name tag on or is being discriminated against. That’s a really good way to stay looped into that stuff.
But yeah, just keep tabs on what’s happening, these big national strikes, especially around the holiday season, get a lot of attention from the media. But in the meantime, after the holidays we’re going to go into that post December lull, and we’re still going to be fighting. So just stay looped in and stay tuned and don’t forget about us.
And in St. Louis, there is still quite a bit going on. Like I said earlier, we do have two workers that are on a paid suspension that have not received pay, that have not been able to pay their rent, that have lost access to their benefits. And we’re in St. Louis, we’re raising funds for them right now, so that’s a really good way to support workers that are local to me.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Hell yeah. Okay. I’m going to toss it to Liisa and Sean around us out, and then we’ll close out.
Liisa Luick:
Okay. First, I would like to give advice as somebody who was retaliated against myself, Moe, contact your state legislature, contact your local politicians, a representative or senator. That’s what I did, and that’s how I managed to start getting paid in addition to my union being awesome and getting me reinstated. But I can’t stress enough when you need help and you’ve been forgotten about trust me, your politicians won’t forget about you because you are a voter.
But I would like to say, which I’ve had to explain to customers before, when they say, “Well, how does this affect me?” Here’s how it affects you, the prices. It’s not inflation, the company raises prices on the merchandise and passes all of this, the cost of theft onto you. $12 cup of coffee. That’s insane. That’s not inflation. Every day at work, I have to call my bosses at least once a day to get permission to change a price, because I’m on a last and final warning still.
And I have to get their permission to change a price for a customer, because the price on the North Face jacket, it’ll say $130, or, hang on just a minute, the price as marked is not the price that is ringing. And needless to say, the prices are going up faster on the merchandise. Then of course, we have staff to change them. So we at the cash registers have to call and get permission to change the prices for the customers. It’s insane. It’s insanity. And all of these prices are being passed on to the customers. So that’s really where it comes from. The bottom line is we as a society and we as consumers are the ones who are paying the price, not just we as workers. And that is the bottom line.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Sean, take us out.
Sean Embly:
All right. What you can do to help if you’re a worker, contact a union about organizing. The laws are stacked against workers right now. Why companies pursue anti-union, union busting tactics is because they can get away with it under the law. If we want to make a change, we’re not going to make a change by relying on politicians, relying on laws that don’t support workers and only support corporations. We’re going to make a change by organizing more work sites and standing up and saying, “You’re going to treat us with respect. You’re going to give us a safe place to work. You’re going to pay us a wage that gives us dignity.” That is what you can do to help. Respect the picket line. Stay tuned in with these sites and organize your work site.
And to give folks just a little bit more context about what the Macy’s workers are fighting for. We’ve gotten now what three or four last best and finals from the company. They’re just entrenched in wanting to gut our contract, take away the wage scales, only give 50 cents increases every year with no promise to ever move up beyond just a little bit above minimum wage, take away holidays. They’re refusing even to agree to allow workers to call the local police if asset protection and store management are unresponsive in an emergency situation or violent situation. That’s the total disregard that these companies have for workers. And if you want to help, you got to organize, and you got to stand with your fellow workers to push these corporations to do the right thing.
Maximillian Alvarez:
So that is Moe Mills, a worker organizer at Starbucks and a member of Starbucks Workers United, Liisa Luick, a longtime sales associate at Macy’s in Washington State, and Sean Embly from the United Food and Commercial Workers, UFCW, Local 3000. Moe, Liisa, Sean, thank you all so much for joining us today on The Real News Network. I really appreciate it, and we’re sending y’all nothing but love and solidarity from Baltimore.
And to all of you watching, thank you so much for caring about this. Please tune in every other week for more worker solidarity live streams here at the Real News Network. Subscribe to our YouTube channel so you never miss a video. And once again, please, please, please become a supporter of our work. Donate using the link on this video, or go to the realnews.com/donate. Support our work so we can keep bringing y’all more important coverage and conversations just like this.
Take care of yourselves, take care of each other, solidarity forever.
Thank you so much for watching The Real News Network where we lift up the voices, stories and struggles that you care about most, and we need your help to keep doing this work. So please tap your screen now, subscribe and donate to the Real News Network. Solidarity Forever.
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
